Emeriti Faculty 2024

Centennial Professor of Psychology Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Psychology 

Randolph Blake earned his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt in 1972, and following a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine, Randolph he launched his academic career at Northwestern University where he achieved the rank of full professor at age 36. In 1988, he was recruited to Vanderbilt to chair the Department of Psychology as it launched an ambitious redesign of its roadmap to the future; fingerprints of Blake’s leadership implementing that plan are conspicuous in the department today. He was also instrumental in shaping the nascent Vanderbilt Vision Research Center and in strengthening ties to the Department of Psychology and Human Development in Peabody College. Over the years he has served on university search committees for major leadership positions, including chancellor, provost, deanships and program directorships. He was involved in the early efforts to establish interdisciplinary work in brain imaging at Vanderbilt and, more recently, in the expansion of the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. In recognition of these and other distinguished service contributions to Vanderbilt, he was awarded the university’s Thomas Jefferson Award in 2008. 

Blake’s enduring research goal has been to understand human visual perception and its neural instantiation, and to tackle those goals he uses psychophysical techniques, human brain imaging and computational modeling. His work focuses largely on normal human adults, but he has collaborated with others in the study of vision in clinical populations including individuals with schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. Over the years he has contributed to our understanding of binocular vision, perception of biological motion, visual object perception, illusory visual experiences and imagery, the role of expectations in resolving perceptual confusion, and the neural concomitants of visual consciousness. Affirming the impact of Blake’s research accomplishments, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012. He is an elected fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Psychological Science. His research awards include Vanderbilt’s Earl Sutherland Prize which he received in 2000 and the Chancellor’s Research Award received in 2004. 

Blake has published more than 300 empirical and theoretical papers in major journals in his field; those papers have received more than 30,000 citations to date. His research has been funded throughout his career by grants from the National Institutes of Health and/or the National Science Foundation. He has supervised 

more than four dozen doctoral and postdoctoral students, many who have assumed successful research careers at universities and health science centers. He is active in many scientific organizations and in the public promotion of science education. From 2009 to 2013 he held the title of Foreign Scholar at Seoul National University where he helped successfully launch their program in brain and cognitive sciences. He has also held visiting professorships at Sapporo University, the University of Otago and the University of Sydney. 

Throughout his career, Randolph has regularly taught undergraduate and graduate students, offering a range of courses including Perception, Brain and Consciousness, Nature of Reality, Art/Mind/Brain, History of Psychology and Experimental Design. In 2020, Randolph received the Jeffrey Nordhaus Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching. 

A capstone to Blake’s career at Vanderbilt was receiving the Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professor Award in 2023. And now, despite his retirement, he hopes to find ways to remain involved in Vanderbilt’s teaching mission and in research collaborations with colleagues at Vanderbilt and other institutions. He has promised himself, however, to devote more time to his other passions: playing the piano, biking and, especially, enjoying the companionship of his loving partner of 45 years, Elaine Blake.

Stanford Moore Professor of Biochemistry Emeritus and 

Director Emeritus of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center 

Richard M. Caprioli earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York in biochemistry and moved to Vanderbilt in 1998 from the University of Texas. He has been president of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and has won many awards and received many accolades in his field. He received the honor of laurea honoris causa di dottore in biological sciences from the University of Naples, Italy, in 2005. 

Caprioli’s research is focused on the development of new and novel mass spectrometry technologies, methods and applications to study the structure and function of endogenous biological molecules in their native state in both health and disease. The unifying theme of this work is the development of innovative technologies for the measurement of molecules within biological systems in their natural intact and interactive environment, avoiding disruptive and lengthy processes such as chemical derivatization and lengthy separation processes. 

Research innovations from his laboratory have led to significant advances in our ability to analyze complex biological mixtures and provided the pioneering innovative basis for the current online capabilities of LC/MS in use worldwide today. His laboratory pioneered high throughput capabilities for MS instrumentation for multipoint time-dependent measurements and hardware and software advances needed to perform laser-based MS imaging. His laboratory is the world’s leading lab for imaging MS, pioneering 2D tissue imaging in both biological and clinical research. In 1998, he became director of Vanderbilt’s Mass Spectrometry Research Center, world-renowned for its technical and analytical innovation in imaging mass spectrometry. He has held the Stanford Moore Chair in Chemistry and the title of professor of biochemistry, chemistry, pharmacology and medicine at Vanderbilt University.

Justin Potter Professor of American Competitive Enterprise Emeritus and 

Professor Emeritus of Management 

Mark A. Cohen joined the Owen Graduate School of Management in 1986. During his tenure at Owen, he has served the school and university extensively as area coordinator for the Business Economics and Strategy group (1998–2008), co-director of the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies (1993– 2011) and senior associate dean (2003–05). He was named the Justin Potter Professor of American Competitive Enterprise in 2003 and granted a secondary appointment at Vanderbilt Law School in 2006. 

Cohen is a leading expert on environmental regulation and disclosure policies, as well as corporate crime and punishment. His scholarship has been widely published in leading journals, with more than 100 articles and books published on a range of research topics, including understanding firm compliance and voluntary overcompliance with environmental regulations, racial disparity in auto lending, and the social costs of criminal activity. He has also held numerous professional leadership appointments, including chair of the Committee on Law and Justice Statistics of the American Statistical Association, member of the board of directors of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis, and a long-standing editorial review board member for several academic journals, including the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis and Managerial and Decision Economics. 

In 2008, Cohen was approved for scholarly leave to serve as vice president for research at Resources for the Future. Resources for the Future is an American nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that conducts independent research into environmental, energy and natural resource issues, primarily using economic analyses. Cohen returned to Vanderbilt in 2011 and was again awarded the Justin Potter Professorship in 2013. 

Cohen earned his B.S.F.S. from Georgetown University in 1978, his M.A. in economics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1983, and his Ph.D. in economics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985. He has been the recipient of the Dean’s Award for Research Productivity (2003), Research Impact (2021) and Teaching Excellence (1994, 2001 and 2021). Cohen has taught numerous MBA and Executive MBA courses at Owen, including Economics of Organizations, Nonmarket Strategy, and Corporate Strategies for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Issues. In 1993 he was one of the business school faculty pioneers offering MBA courses on environmental management issues, and over the years he developed specialized MBA courses such as Law and Business of Climate Change, Strategic Business Solutions to Address Structural Racism, and International Seminar: Israel. The latter course is particularly popular among Owen students and includes an immersion trip during which MBA students consult for Israeli startups and explore cultural sites.

Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities Emerita and 

Professor Emerita of English 

Joan Colin Dayan is a lodestar in scholarship regarding 19th century American literary studies, Caribbean and Haitian cultures, literature and law, and Black studies. She earned her B.A. in English, summa cum laude, from Smith College in 1974 and her Ph.D. in comparative literature from City University Graduate Center (New York) in 1980, after which she joined the faculty in English at Yale University. The Vanderbilt Department of English had the good luck to recruit Dayan as the Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities in 2004, luring her away from the University of Pennsylvania where she held appointments in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory and Africana Studies. In 2012, Dayan was appointed as faculty in the Vanderbilt Law School. Awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University (to name just three), in 2012 Dayan was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Dayan’s research is field-defining and disciplinarily expansive. Her scholarship brings a close study of language to bear on the practices of literature, law and religion that make and unmake persons. She examines the institutions and rhetoric policing, often cruelly, not only people but also the borders separating the human from the animal and the divine. Her many books include Haiti, History, and the Gods (University of California Press, 1995), The Story of Cruel and Unusual (MIT Press, 2007), The Law Is a White Dog (Princeton University Press, 2011), With Dogs at the Edge of Life (Columbia University Press, 2015), and Animal Quintet: A Southern Memoir (Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020). With a particular passion for canine creatures, Dayan explores the more-than-human orders of the cosmos and the world that connect us to dogs and to each other. 

Throughout her celebrated career, Dayan has modeled intellectual generosity, encouraging her colleagues and students to take risks and think beyond the conventional parameters of the discipline. 

Reverend James M. Lawson Chair of History Emeritus and 

Professor Emeritus of History 

Dennis C. Dickerson is the rare scholar whose breadth has earned national recognition in three distinct fields of the modern African American experience: labor, civil rights, and religious history. 

Dickerson earned a B.A. from Lincoln University in 1971 and his Ph.D. from Washington University in 1978. He was granted tenure at Williams College in 1983, arriving at Vanderbilt in 1999. In 2007 he was awarded the Reverend James M. Lawson Chair of History. During his decades of service, the Vanderbilt and Nashville communities came to depend not only on his exemplary scholarship, teaching and service, but also on his reasoned, calm and authoritative voice in matters institutional, intellectual and political. 

Dickerson’s first two books, Out of the Crucible: Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875–1980 (SUNY Press, 1986) and the prize-winning Militant Mediator: Whitney M. Young Jr. (University Press of Kentucky, 1998), established his reputation as a historian of race and labor. His biographical studies of civil rights thinkers James M. Lawson Jr. and William Stuart Nelson—along with his ongoing collaborative work on Nashville’s role in the civil rights struggle—cemented him as a leading historian of civil rights. Meanwhile, Dickerson’s extensive writings in religious history led to his presidency of the American Society of Church History. His book African American Preachers and Politics: The Careys of Chicago (University Press of Mississippi, 2010) further enhanced his scholarly standing in this field. Additionally, his latest book, The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is a rich institutional narrative interwoven with two centuries of decolonization and social movements. 

Dickerson’s impressive array of courses—on topics ranging from the Obama presidency to the life of Gandhi, and from African American religion to the history of health and medicine—has enriched Vanderbilt’s undergraduate program immeasurably. A conscientious mentor to many Ph.D. students, Dickerson launched a set of exciting dissertations and scholarly careers at institutions including Belmont University, the University of North Alabama, the University of Colorado, and Sewanee: The University of the South. His service to Vanderbilt has been generous and significant, including his leadership of a reckoning with the university’s history in the 2017 convening, “Wrestling with Our Past: Vanderbilt, Race, and the Confederate Flag: A Symposium on Race and Reconciliation.” 

From the church pulpit to the lecture hall, Dickerson has been an ethical leader, a vibrant intellectual, a 

Professor Emeritus of Economics 

Benjamin Eden earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1975 and served on the Vanderbilt faculty from 2002 to 2024. Before joining Vanderbilt, he held faculty appointments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Iowa, Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Haifa. 

During his stellar career, Eden has worked on some of the biggest questions in macroeconomics. His Ph.D. dissertation, written under an all-star team (William Brock, Robert Barro, and the legendary Nobel laureate Milton Friedman), was a major work focused on the role of uncertainty in monetary models. Since completing his doctoral work, he has contributed to some of the most fundamental macroeconomic issues related to the role of money in the economy, the economics of human capital, the functioning of the price mechanism in markets, factors driving business cycles and inflation, and much more. Indeed, there is hardly a major area within the vast domain of macroeconomics in which he has not left a mark. 

Eden’s publications include almost 40 peer-reviewed journal articles as well as the research monograph A Course in Monetary Economics: Sequential Trade, Money, and Uncertainty (Blackwell, 2005). His papers have been published in some of the best journals of the profession, including the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Theory, The Review of Economic Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics and Journal of International Economics.

Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy 

David J. Ernst earned his B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965 and 1970, respectively. In 1970–72 he was on the faculty of Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico. After a research associate position at Case Western Reserve University, he joined the faculty of Texas A&M in 1975. He rose through the ranks to full professor, served as director of the International Center for Theoretical and Applied Physics at Texas A&M, and co-directed the undergraduate and graduate programs in the Department of Physics. Ernst came to Vanderbilt in 1992 as chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He served in this role three times: 1992–95, 1997–99 and 2002–04. He also served as an associate dean in the College of Arts and Science 1995–97. 

Ernst is a visionary leader who ventured in uncharted territories. He co-founded and directed the Vanderbilt Master’s in Medical Physics Program and the Communication of Science and Technology Program. His greatest passion and perhaps greatest success is the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program. The goal of the program is to improve demographic representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Ernst conceived the program with Arnold Burger and Eugene Collins of Fisk University. He then recruited Keivan Stassun to Vanderbilt, and Stassun and Burger were named co-directors of the program at its start in 2004. The program has grown, and the students have excelled. As of today, more than 170 students have been enrolled in the program, 137 master’s degrees have been awarded, 120 students have bridged to Ph.D. programs and 52 students have earned the Ph.D. The program has become a national model for similarly organized bridge programs, most notably, the American Physical Society Bridge Program. 

Ernst’s research is in intermediate energy nuclear theory. He conducts phenomenological studies of neutrino oscillations. His research addresses the mass hierarchy and mixing angles of the three known neutrino particles (electron, muon and tau neutrino) and the possibility of the existence of a fourth sterile neutrino. Over his long career, Ernst has published more than 80 research papers and presented numerous talks at national and international conferences. 

Ernst has been recognized with numerous awards over his career, including Outstanding Teacher Award from the Organization of Black Graduate and Professional Students at Vanderbilt University (2014), the Francis G. Slack Award from the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (2011), the Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach from the American Physical Society (2011), and the Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor Award, Vanderbilt University, 2002–03. He is a fellow of the National Society of Black Physicists and the American Physical Society.

Associate Professor Emeritus of Computer Science 

Douglas H. Fisher joined Vanderbilt University in 1987. He earned his Ph.D. (1987), M.S. (1983) and B.S. (1980) in information and computer science from the University of California at Irvine, after spending his first three undergraduate years at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1975–76) and the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis (1976–78). His research, teaching and service are in artificial intelligence, including machine learning and cognitive modeling. His recent Ph.D. students have explored cognitive theory of large language models, and he has focused on the nexus of computational creativity and sustainability, notably place-based, conservation-oriented storytelling by AIs. 

Fisher is keenly interested in the broader impacts of computer science research and in broadening participation through areas such as computational creativity and sustainability. His innovative teaching includes placing an AI course, with submission and auto-grading, on the nascent web in the late 1990s; wrapping MOOCs for on-campus courses in the 2010s; designing and co-teaching courses on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, and on Vanderbilt and the New Madrid Earthquake; and most recently designing and teaching computational creativity and computing for sustainability. He also has written and used a Wikibook for a favorite service course on the theory of formal languages, automata and computation. 

From 2007 to 2010, Fisher was a program director for the National Science Foundation, overseeing AI and machine learning research funding, as well as contributing to sustainability initiatives by NSF, representing NSF and the United States, and pioneering remote and hybrid paneling practices at NSF. He received a Director’s Award for excellence in program management in 2010 for these efforts. 

Fisher’s service to Vanderbilt and to the Department of Computer Science has included serving as director of graduate studies, director of undergraduate studies, and as a member of the Faculty Senate. He has advised computer science majors who are students outside the School of Engineering and all computer science minors. Before the launch of Vanderbilt’s residential colleges system, Fisher was a residential faculty member, first at North Hall on the Peabody campus, then at McGill Hall. In 2013 he was the first faculty director of Warren College, one of Vanderbilt’s first two residential colleges for upper-division students. For this work he received the Chancellor’s Cup (2006), the K.C. Potter Award (2012) and the Outstanding Service Award (2019). Fisher was founding director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Digital Learning.

He is currently under contract with Routledge for a book on AI for academic libraries, which he is writing with a colleague at Yale University. He is considering writing a book on AI and theology as well as pursuing his interest in building AI tools to promote productive discourse. One of his goals is to make progress developing the paradigm of AI-mediated productive discourse between humans, which he believes holds great potential to benefit our nation.

William C. Oehmig Associate Professor in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Emeritus 

Luke M. Froeb joined the Owen Graduate School of Management as an assistant professor of management in 1993. He had previously taught at Tulane University (1984–85) and worked as an economist in the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice (1986–92). He was promoted to associate professor with tenure at Owen in 1998 and awarded an endowed chair in 2002, the William C. Oehmig Chair in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. 

During his tenure at Owen, Froeb has earned distinction for his teaching, having been recognized as “Outstanding Professor” in the Executive MBA Program. His students note his passion for the topic, his inspirational teaching style, and his real-world, grounded approach to teaching, derived from his experience at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission where he focused on applying economic theory to real-world situations. Today his models are used by agencies around the world to enforce competition laws. 

Froeb’s research focuses on the economics of competition policy, industrial organization, and law and economics. His models have been applied to merger analysis and his scholarship has appeared in many widely regarded journals, such as the RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization and the Antitrust Law Journal. He has been awarded multiple grants and other sources of external funding. He is also the co-author of the textbook Managerial Economics: A Problem Solving Approach, in its fifth edition with Cengage in 2018. 

Froeb earned his A.B. in economics from Stanford University in 1978 and his Ph.D. in econometrics from the University of Wisconsin in 1983. At Owen he has taught classes focused on microeconomics in the Executive MBA, Master of Management in Health Care, and daytime MBA programs.

Professor Emerita of Psychology and Human Development 

Judy Garber earned her B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1973 and her Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in 1987. She has been at Vanderbilt University since 1985. 

Garber’s research focuses on the etiology, course, outcome, treatment and prevention of depression in children and adolescents. She studies social-cognitive, environmental, biological and interpersonal factors that contribute to the onset and maintenance of mood and anxiety disorders. Garber is interested in the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral interventions with depressed adolescents and the prevention of depression, particularly in high-risk offspring of depressed parents. 

Early in her career, Garber was among a small number of researchers who recognized that depression could occur in children, a finding that was not widely accepted 35 years ago (Garber, New Directions for Child Development, 1984). Largely due to her and others’ work, depression is now a well-recognized syndrome in children. She also highlighted important developmental differences in the phenomenology of depressive disorders (Weiss and Garber, Development and Psychopathology, 2003) and described the emotional, social and cognitive developmental abilities needed to engage in cognitive therapy (Garber, Frankel and Harrington, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2016). 

Garber has authored more than 174 peer-reviewed publications and 48 chapters and co-edited three books. According to Google Scholar, she has been cited more than 32,000 times. She received two early career awards, the Boyd R. McCandless Young Scientist Award for Research in Developmental Psychology (1992) and the David Shakow Young Investigator Award from the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association (1995). In 2017 she was awarded the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professorship from Vanderbilt University and, in 2018, the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology. 

Garber also has served the university as director of clinical training (1998–2003); director of the undergraduate Honors Program in Psychological Science (2002– 06); chair, Clinical Search Committee, 1995–2001, 2008–09; member, Promotion and Tenure Committee, Peabody College, 2014–18; and chair, Department Space Committee (2008–14). 

Garber has had consistently outstanding teaching ratings for both graduate and undergraduate courses. She has mentored more than 20 honors students, more than 30 undergraduate directed study students, 15 master’s students, 20 Ph.D. students in clinical psychology and 14 postdoctoral fellows.

Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean’s Chair Emeritus 

In 2023, John G. Geer was named senior advisor to the chancellor on key strategic initiatives that promote democracy, free expression and open dialogue. He also holds the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair and is professor of political science. He previously had served as the Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science. He was vice provost for academic and strategic affairs from September 2014 through June 2018, interim dean of the Graduate School in 2015, and chair of the Department of Political Science from 2010 to 2014. 

As vice provost, Geer spearheaded the design and implementation of several of the essential components of the Academic Strategic Plan, after co-chairing its planning process with Susan Wente, then provost, from 2013 to 2014. He served as co-chair of the Trans-Institutional Programs (TIPs) Council, which was charged with identifying TIPs applications that would expand and strengthen Vanderbilt’s research and teaching portfolio through its $50 million trans-institutional initiative. He also led a three-year process involving faculty from across campus to design and implement Immersion Vanderbilt, a new undergraduate degree requirement. 

Geer has led multiple initiatives to recruit, support and retain faculty, including the Faculty Development and Diversity website, the Faculty Insights professional development series, and the Deans Working Group to support implementation of the recommendations of the COACHE Faculty Satisfaction Survey. He has also led and co-chaired numerous other initiatives, faculty councils and committees through the university’s shared governance process. Examples include launching a strategic review process for Vanderbilt University Press, leading the successful search for the Evans Family Executive Director of the Career Center, and co-chairing the search for the first vice provost for inclusive excellence. 

Geer helped to launch and currently manages the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, an initiative that aims to overcome political polarization through sound research and evidence-based discourse. Geer is a founder of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and now co-directs the influential Vanderbilt Poll, which launched in January 2011. In 2015 the Vanderbilt Poll became a charter member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Transparency Initiative. The Vanderbilt Poll conducts surveys of the entire state and of Nashville to assess the public’s thinking on a range of issues that are of interest to citizens, policymakers and elected officials.

Geer has published five books and more than 20 articles on presidential politics and elections and previously was editor of The Journal of Politics. He published a fifth edition of Gateways to Democracy (Cengage Learning, 2021). An earlier book, In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns (University of Chicago Press, 2006), won the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University. Geer has provided extensive commentary in the news media on politics, including live national interviews for Fox News, CNN, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, PBS and NPR. He has also written op-ed pieces for Politico, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune. 

Geer’s teaching has earned him several awards at Vanderbilt, including the 2014 Vanderbilt Alumni Education Award, the 2009 Ellen Gregg Ingalls Award for teaching excellence, the 2005 Jeffrey Nordhaus Award and the 2004 Birkby Prize. 

Geer joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1995. He earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1986 and his bachelor’s degree from Franklin & Marshall College in 1980. Before coming to Vanderbilt, he was on the faculty at Arizona State University.

Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Finance Emeritus 

Craig M. Lewis joined the Owen Graduate School of Management in 1986. During his tenure at Owen, he has served as the Finance area coordinator for many years, was named the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Finance, and was honored with a secondary appointment at the Vanderbilt Law School starting in 2014. He is also a certified public accountant and worked for Arthur Young & Co. before joining the Owen faculty. 

Lewis’ research focuses on corporate financial policy and asset pricing. In recent years he has employed textual analysis of qualitative factors in corporate disclosures to detect potential fraud. His early work addressed topics such as convertible debt financing, corporate capital formation, forecasting stock market volatility, and herding by equity analysts. His scholarship has been published in several leading journals, including Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Corporate Finance and Financial Management. 

In addition to his scholarly contributions, Lewis has consulted extensively for leaders in the financial industry, including Chicago Board Options Exchange, Dollar General, and State Street Global Advisors, as well as public institutions such as the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In May 2011, while Lewis was on scholarly leave, the SEC named him chief economist and director of the SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis. During his three years at the SEC, Lewis led efforts to bolster the role of economic analysis in the financial regulatory process, including implementing the landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform law. 

Lewis earned his B.S. in accounting from Ohio State University in 1978, his M.S. in finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982, and his Ph.D. in finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986. He has taught a variety of finance classes in Owen’s executive and daytime MBA programs, including Investments, Corporate Finance, Corporate Financial Policy and others. He has twice received the James A. Webb Award for Excellence in Teaching (1991, 2000) and has also earned accolades as Outstanding EMBA Professor (1991) and the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence (1992, 1999). 

Professor Emeritus of Public Policy 

Mark Lipsey earned a B.S. in applied psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1968 and a Ph.D. in psychology from the Johns Hopkins University in 1972. He accepted a tenure-track position at the Claremont Graduate University and moved through the ranks to full professor, serving a term as department chairman along the way. In 1992 he joined the Vanderbilt faculty as a tenured full professor and director of the Policy Development and Program Evaluation graduate program administered jointly by Peabody College and the Vanderbilt Institute of Public Policy Studies. 

After leading several research centers affiliated with VIPPS, Lipsey moved to a research professor position to serve full time as the director of the rapidly expanding Peabody Research Institute while maintaining an appointment in the Department of Human and Organizational Development. His research specialties are evaluation research and research synthesis (meta-analysis) investigating the effects of social interventions with children, youth and families. The topics addressed include risk and intervention for juvenile delinquency, antisocial behavior and substance use, early childhood education, issues of methodological quality in program evaluation research, and ways to help practitioners and policymakers make better use of research to improve the outcomes of programs for children and youth. This research has been supported by major federal funding agencies and foundations and recognized by awards from Vanderbilt and major professional organizations. 

Lipsey’s published works include textbooks on program evaluation, meta-analysis and statistical power as well as numerous articles on applied methods and the effectiveness of diverse intervention programs for youth. Among other professional activities, Lipsey has served on the Advisory Committee for the National Science Foundation Directorate for Education and Human Resources, the Science Advisory Board for the federal Office of Justice Programs, and the Committee on Law and Justice for the National Research Council. He also has been co-chair of the Campbell Collaboration Steering Group, a founding trustee of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology, a visiting fellow at the U.S. Government Accountability Office and a Fulbright Scholar.

Professor Emeritus of Mathematics 

Michael L. Mihalik earned his B.S. in mathematics from California State College of Pennsylvania in 1973. He earned a master’s in 1977 and a Ph.D. in 1979, both from SUNY Center at Binghamton, New York. 

Mihalik’s academic career started at the University of Utah, where he was hired as a postdoctoral instructor in 1979. He joined Vanderbilt University in 1982 as an assistant professor, earning promotions to associate professor with tenure in 1988 and professor of mathematics in 1998. 

As chair of the Vanderbilt Department of Mathematics from 2000 to 2005, Mihalik significantly increased external funding, played a crucial role in hiring and retaining a significant portion of the tenured/tenure-track faculty, established four research centers within the department, and initiated a Spring School in Non-Commutative Geometry and Operator Algebras led by Centennial Professor and Fields Medalist Alain Connes. 

Mihalik’s expertise spans topology, geometry and group theory. He has actively contributed to the academic community, serving on committees for 53 Ph.D. candidates, supervising four Ph.D. dissertations, securing various National Science Foundation grants, organizing multiple conferences (including three international Shanks conferences at Vanderbilt), publishing more than 50 papers in international journals, and delivering more than 90 invited talks over the past two decades. He has also enjoyed extended research visits to renowned mathematical centers in Canada, Germany, Italy, Israel, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the U.S. 

Mihalik is an active member of the American Mathematical Society. Over the years, he served as a reviewer for Mathematical Reviews and as a referee for the NSF and multiple international journals. His university service is highlighted by a term on the Graduate Faculty Council, two terms on the Faculty Senate, a dean search committee, and most recently the A&S Curriculum Committee.

Professor Emerita of Psychology 

Laura R. Novick earned her B.S. from the University of Iowa in 1981 and her Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1986. She has been on the Vanderbilt University faculty for 35 years, with a primary appointment in the Department of Psychology and Human Development at Peabody College and a secondary appointment in the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Science. She has taught undergraduate and graduate classes in cognitive psychology and statistics. In her research laboratory she has mentored undergraduates—as research assistants, honors students and immersion students—and graduate students. She has served on various university committees, including six years on the social sciences Institutional Review Board committee and three years as a member of the Graduate Faculty Delegate Assembly. She has also served on many college committees, including 14 years on the Faculty Affairs Committee. In that capacity, she helped write the standards for retention and promotion of practice faculty. She has likewise served on numerous department committees. 

A cognitive psychologist by training, with expertise in problem solving and reasoning, Novick has contributed most recently and extensively to innovative interdisciplinary research related to college students’ ability to understand and reason with evolutionary tree diagrams. Her research has led textbook authors to change how they draw such diagrams in biology, evolution and zoology textbooks to improve student learning. The introductory biology textbooks alone reach approximately 800,000 students every year. 

The importance of her work on applying basic principles of cognition to educational problems has received national recognition. Novick was a reviewer for the U.S. K-12 Next Generation Science Standards and an invited participant in several interdisciplinary conferences on discipline-based education research and STEM. She also served on the National Research Council Consensus Committee on the Status, Contributions, and Future Directions of Discipline-Based Education Research, whose book-length report, Discipline-based education research: Understanding and improving learning in undergraduate science and engineering, has been cited more than 1,000 times.

Centennial Professor of Mathematics Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics 

Alexander Y. Olshanskiy earned his M.S., Ph.D. and D.Sc. (habilitation) in mathematics from Moscow State University (Russia) in 1968, 1971 and 1979, respectively. He progressed through the academic ranks, holding the positions of assistant professor (1970), associate professor (1976) and professor of mathematics (1985) at Moscow State University. In 1999, Olshanskiy joined Vanderbilt University as Centennial Professor of Mathematics. 

Olshanskiy is an expert in group theory and in associative and Lie algebras. He has published more than 110 research papers and delivered more than 300 invited talks at conferences and seminars in universities across 29 countries. Under his guidance, 31 Ph.D. dissertations were successfully defended, including nine at Vanderbilt University. 

Olshanskiy’s distinguished contributions to mathematics were recognized by an invitation to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians 1982, which is considered among the highest honors a mathematician can receive. His accolades also include the Moscow Mathematical Society Prize (1970), the Malcev Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2000), and his election as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2015. 

During his tenure at Vanderbilt University, Olshanskiy taught a range of graduate and undergraduate courses, including Modern Algebra, Group Theory, Varieties of Groups, Hyperbolic Groups, Representations of Groups, Lie Groups and Algebras, Geometric Group Theory, Combinatorial Group Theory, Universal Algebras, Abstract Algebra, and Number Theory. He received numerous grants, including continuous support from the National Science Foundation from 2000 to 2023, jointly with Mark V. Sapir. Beyond his research and teaching duties, Olshanskiy contributed to the administrative functions of the Department of Mathematics by participating in various committees. He also served on editorial boards of many mathematical journals, with a cumulative service of more than 100 years, and was an expert for the Russian Fund for Fundamental Research from 1996 to 2023.

Associate Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Richard Alan Peters II, an accomplished electrical engineer and educator, has made significant contributions to academia, industry and research during a career that spans more than three decades, earning recognition for exceptional service, contributions to knowledge, and expertise in various domains. 

Peters earned a B.A. in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1978 (Phi Beta Kappa), an M.S. in 1985, and a Ph.D. in 1988, both in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona where he was an American Electronics Association Fellow. He joined Vanderbilt University in September 1988 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering, becoming an integral part of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering through his research, teaching, and advising of students. He has served as the director of graduate studies in the ECE department for the past three years where he has worked with the Graduate School as well as the School of Engineering to foster and develop graduate education at Vanderbilt. He has been highly regarded for his commitment to teaching and mentoring students and his dedication to advancing the field. 

Peters has a rich research background, with a focus on a wide range of topics. He has performed research at government labs and in industry. For two years he did imaging research at the United States Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Complex. For eight years he worked on the Robonaut Project at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which led to a basic patent on robot intelligence and the founding of Universal Robotics Inc. He was the chief technology officer at Universal Robotics from June 2008 to 2011, where he led projects in self-learning, intelligent, sensory-guided industrial robots for logistics and materials handling. This practical experience enriched both his academic insights and his research. 

Peters has authored more than 20 notable papers, and his publications have made a significant impact on the field. His research work has appeared in prestigious journals and conferences, and his contributions span various domains, including geo-electromagnetics, signal processing, image processing, digital embedded systems, robotics, artificial intelligence, optimization, brain-machine interfaces, and computer vision. His research portfolio showcases his dedication to advancing knowledge and technology. 

In recognition of his exceptional service and contributions, Peters has received prestigious awards, including the Edward J. White Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Service from Vanderbilt in May 2023 and the ECE Faculty Award for Excellence in Service in January 2022. 

Peters has been a central figure in the history and forward trajectory of electrical and computer engineering at Vanderbilt, with a career that spans academia, industry and research. His commitment to education, excellence and advancing the frontiers of knowledge is evident through his extensive body of work and achievements. He has continually inspired students, researchers and colleagues at Vanderbilt and beyond. 

H. Eugene McBrayer Chair in Chemical Engineering Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering 

Peter N. Pintauro earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the faculty of Tulane University in 1986, where he rose to the rank of professor of chemical engineering in 1994. In July 2002 he moved to Case Western Reserve University as chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and was appointed Kent Hale Smith Professor of Engineering in October 2004. Pintauro joined Vanderbilt University in 2008, served as chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering 2008–13, and was named the inaugural holder of the H. Eugene McBrayer Chair in Chemical Engineering in 2009. 

His research interests span areas of electrochemical engineering, membrane science, fuel cells and organic electrochemical synthesis. He has authored more than 130 refereed journal publications, numerous proceedings and book chapters, and holds 15 patents. He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, a past president of the North American Membrane Society, and the 2018 recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fuel Cell R&D Award. At Vanderbilt, Pintauro taught core graduate courses in applied mathematics and transport phenomena and an upper-level course in corrosion engineering. 

Pintauro recently formed a startup company, eFiber Innovations LLC, to license/ commercialize intellectual property and products based on patents from his membrane and electrode electrospinning work at Vanderbilt. He is considered a world leader in the use of nanofiber electrospinning for the fabrication of membranes and electrodes for fuel cells, batteries and sustainable energy applications.

Professor Emerita of Viola 

Kathryn C. Plummer marks her 50th year serving the Blair School of Music. Recognized both as an impressive performer and dedicated teacher, she was honored to be included in an elite list of “World-Class Artists and Teachers” by the Journal of the American Viola Society (Vol. 37, No. 2) in 2021. 

Plummer began her career with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, rising to the rank of assistant principal violist. She joined the Blair faculty in 1974, and as violist of the Blair String Quartet (1974–87) she presented numerous world premieres, recorded several acclaimed albums, toured the United States, and gave a New York debut in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. In 1981 she was associate professor of viola at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio, commuting between the two cities before returning permanently to Nashville in 1983. Her close affiliation with the BSQ and members of the Blair faculty has remained the core inspirational experience of her professional performing career. In 2019 she temporarily rejoined the BSQ on its Chilean tour, performing and teaching at the Portillo International Music Festival and Academy. 

As a dedicated chamber musician, Plummer has traveled to many parts of the musical world, performing for more than two decades with the Festival der Zukunft (Switzerland). She performed regularly with the Sitka Music Festival (Alaska) during its summer, fall and winter seasons in both Sitka and Anchorage. Other appearances have been with the Smithsonian Chamber Players (Washington, D.C.), the Seattle Chamber Music Festival (Washington), the Sedona Music Festival (Arizona), the Notre Dame Chamber Players (Indiana), the Saint-Céré Festival (France), the Craftsbury Chamber Players (Vermont) and the Trio de Barcelona (Spain). 

As a viola recitalist she has performed at the National Gallery of Art, at Alice Tully Hall, on National Public Radio, and at several International Viola Congresses. As soloist with orchestra she presented the world premiere of Alan Shulman’s Variations for Viola, Harp and Strings at the XIV International Viola Congress in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She also has appeared as soloist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, the Festival der Zukunft Orchestra, the Anchorage Symphony Festival Orchestra, the Peninsula Festival Orchestra (Wisconsin), the Aspen Festival Student Orchestra, and the Indiana University Orchestra. 

In addition to her early orchestral tenure with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (1972–74), Plummer was principal violist of the Aspen Chamber Orchestra for six consecutive summers and served as principal violist with the Peninsula Festival 

Orchestra. In 1996 she served as interim principal violist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra under its conductor, Kenneth Schermerhorn. 

Over her long career, critics have praised her artistry: “an especially vibrant and sonorous viola,” The New York Times; “played with eloquence and persuasive authority,” the Anchorage Times; “a highlight of the Congress,” The Strad; “she played with lovely artistry,” the Cincinnati Enquirer; “stellar,” Musical America. 

Plummer has taught at the Aspen Music Festival, Rocky Ridge Music Center (Colorado) and the Curs Internacional de Música de Vic (Spain). She frequently is invited to teach master classes in conservatories and universities nationwide. In spring 2024 she presented the Collegiate Viola Master Class at the American String Teachers Association National Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. She has served many years as a national board member of the American Viola Society and served from 2011 to 2013 as the viola forum editor with the American String Teachers Association. 

A native Kentuckian, she was educated at Indiana University and the Juilliard School. Her mentors include violists Joseph Beach, Joseph Pival, Robert Oppelt, David Dawson, Walter Trampler, William Primrose, Samuel Rhodes, Martha Katz and pianist György Sebők. The mentorship she received from these teachers has been passed along to countless violists during her time at Blair. Her students, including three Founder’s Medalists, developed into fine musicians and scholars. Often recognized by internal school awards, many now hold prominent teaching and performing positions throughout the world. 

Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology and Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry 

Dr. Vito Quaranta is a systems biologist who, for almost two decades, has been implementing cutting-edge interdisciplinary efforts that meld mathematics, engineering, computation and biology to solve the problems of cancer invasion, metastasis and resistance to treatment. 

He earned his M.D. from the University of Bari in Italy in 1974 and joined Vanderbilt in 2003. He has served as professor of pharmacology and biochemistry in the School of Medicine Basic Sciences, director of the Quantitative Systems Biology Center, and principal investigator for the National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Vanderbilt. He also has trained approximately 50 postdoctoral fellows, Ph.D. students, and students in the Vanderbilt Medical Scientist Training Program. 

Dr. Quaranta has achieved international recognition for his contributions to cancer systems biology. He has authored almost 300 highly cited scientific articles in the fields of cancer and systems biology and several relevant chapters in medical books. His accolades include election as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the Stanley Cohen Award for Outstanding Contribution for Research Bridging Diverse Disciplines; the Apulians in the World Prize for Outstanding Achievements of Apulia Natives; NCI-sponsored Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer on Integrative Cancer Biology; scholarship and fellowship from the Leukemia Society of America; senior fellowship from the American Cancer Society, California Division; and fellowship from the Italian-American Medical Education Foundation. 

He has been and continues to be an invited lecturer at numerous congresses and conferences on cancer systems biology. He established an ongoing course in cancer systems biology at Vanderbilt; he lectures and holds workshops on the topic at national and international scientific meetings; and he has twice co-chaired the NCI’s Cancer Systems Biology Consortium. Quaranta is currently or has been on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, including Science Signaling, the Journal of Cellular Physiology and Cancer Research. He routinely reviews for high-impact journals and has been a member of several review panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute. 

Quaranta’s laboratory has been focused since 2015 on small cell lung cancer as an ideal system to understand the contribution of nongenetic mechanisms underlying heterogeneity, tolerance and resistance. He also recently co-founded two start-up companies, the first based on software technology to identify therapeutic targets and the second to quantify drug combination synergy.

Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy 

Paul D. Sheldon earned his B.A. in 1980 and his Ph.D. in 1986, both from the University of California, Berkeley. He received postdoctoral training at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He joined Vanderbilt in 1991 as an assistant professor of physics, was promoted to associate professor in 1998, and to professor in 2005. Sheldon has served the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the College of Arts and Science and the university in many important roles. He has helped shape the undergraduate physics program and has taught almost every undergraduate class offered by the department, including large introductory classes and the most challenging classes of the curriculum for the physics major. He is very well liked and recommended by students and is a recipient of the Outstanding Pre-Major Adviser award from the College of Arts and Science. Sheldon has mentored 13 undergraduates, five Ph.D. students and eight postdoctoral fellows. 

Sheldon has performed research in experimental high-energy particle physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, the Fermilab Tevatron, and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland. As a member of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, he is a co-author of the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson. This was the last particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics that had not yet been discovered when the LHC was turned on in 2010. This discovery led to the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics being awarded to the theorists who had predicted it 50 years earlier: Peter Higgs and Francois Englert. 

Sheldon’s publication and citations record is outstanding, as he has participated in several extremely successful large-scale experimental efforts. He is recognized nationally and internationally as a valuable member of the particle physics community who is an expert on high-performance scientific computing. Sheldon led the Vanderbilt research community to establish the Vanderbilt Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education in 2003. For the last 20 years he has served as its faculty director and chair of the Steering Committee. Under his direction, ACCRE has grown to be a world-class facility with more than 600 multi-core systems that is used for research in a wide variety of fields, including genetics research, particle physics, high-energy nuclear physics, and astronomy. Sheldon was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for “significant contributions to searches for rare and forbidden charm decays.”

Professor Emeritus of Emergency Medicine 

Dr. Corey Slovis, FACP, FACEP, FAAEM, FAEMS, is the founding chairman of the Vanderbilt Department of Emergency Medicine and served in that role from July 1992 until July 2020. He is currently the medical director for the Nashville Fire Department and Nashville International Airport. He earned his B.S. from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 1971 and his M.D. from New Jersey Medical School in 1975. He has completed residencies in internal medicine and emergency medicine at Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He is board certified in emergency medicine, internal medicine and emergency medical services. He joined Vanderbilt in 1992. 

Dr. Slovis is one of emergency medicine’s most famous educators and routinely teaches at the largest gatherings of the specialty. He has received the Judith E. Tintinalli Outstanding Contribution in Education Award from the American College of Emergency Physicians. He has also won the American College of Emergency Physicians Speaker of the Year Award, the Peter Rosen Award from the American Association of Emergency Medicine, and the Hal Jayne Academic Excellence Award from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. Most recently, Slovis received the Lifetime Service Award from the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine. He was one of the first Vanderbilt faculty members to be named a Master Clinical Teacher by the dean and has been selected as Best Clinical Professor by the graduating medical school classes at every institution where he has taught, having won this award seven times in his career including three Shovel Awards from Vanderbilt’s graduating senior medical students. Slovis has two teaching awards named after him: Vanderbilt’s Corey M. Slovis Excellence in Teaching Award and the Major Metropolitan EMS Medical Directors Consortium’s Corey M. Slovis Award for Excellence in Education. 

Slovis teaches regularly and continues to publish—with more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and numerous book chapters to date—and has co-authored three books. He is a runner and practices yoga both aggressively and poorly. He is married to Dr. Bonnie Slovis, professor emerita of medicine. 

Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Chair in History Emerita and Professor Emerita of History 

Arleen M. Tuchman, an internationally recognized historian of medicine, served Vanderbilt University in distinguished fashion for nearly four decades, teaching legions of undergraduate students and graduate students, and contributing with devotion and wisdom to the administrative and faculty needs of the Department of History and the entire university. She is the author of several dozen scholarly articles and three major monographs on the history of medicine, most recently the acclaimed book Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease (Yale University Press, 2020), which won two major book awards. 

Having earned her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985, Tuchman joined Vanderbilt as a Mellon Assistant Professor in 1986. Her influential scholarly work, and her excellence as a teacher, propelled her through a series of promotions that culminated in 2020 with an endowed chair, the Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Chair in History. She has played an important role in helping to create, and sustain, the highly popular major in medicine, health and society. She has held prestigious fellowships from a broad range of leading scholarly organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center and the German Academic Exchange Service. 

Her work has focused on the shifting roles of women within the fields of medicine and medical research over the past two centuries, in Europe and the U.S., as well as the impact of race on the medical profession and on the health care experience of minority populations within the U.S. over the past hundred years. Even as she retires from active teaching, she is continuing her pathbreaking work as a research scholar, with a forthcoming project titled Addiction as a Family Disease, 1800–present, which examines the effects of alcoholism and drug addiction on American families over the past two centuries. The many graduate students trained by Tuchman over her distinguished career continue to carry forward her far-reaching scholarly legacy as they pursue their own careers in academia.

Professor Emeritus of Economics and Strategy 

Larry Van Horn joined the Owen Graduate School of Management as an associate professor of management in 2006. He had previously taught at the University of Rochester (1996–2006). During his tenure at Owen, Van Horn founded the Master of Management in Health Care program (2009) and has served tirelessly as executive director of health affairs. The MMHC program has produced approximately 450 alumni since its founding and has consistently been one of Owen’s most highly ranked programs in terms of overall student satisfaction. Van Horn also founded and directed Owen’s Center for Health Care Market Innovation, and he holds courtesy appointments in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine and the Vanderbilt Law School. 

Van Horn is a sought-after speaker on the topic of health care markets and reform for national associations and corporations. He has consulted with most of the largest hospital systems and insurers in the U.S. on topics of data analysis and antitrust concerns. Together with Sen. Bill Frist, Van Horn created and has co-directed the Nashville Health Care Council Fellows program. 

Van Horn’s research focuses on the shift to consumer purchase of health care and the impact it will have on new delivery models. He is recognized as a leading expert and researcher on health care management and economics, and his research has appeared in leading journals such as the Journal of Health Economics, The New England Journal of Medicine and the Harvard Business Review. His commentary regarding health care economics appears frequently in mainstream media ranging from USA Today to Fox Business. 

Van Horn earned his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1989, his master of public health from the University of Rochester in 1990 and his MBA, also from the University of Rochester, in 1992. He earned his Ph.D. in managerial science and applied economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. At Owen he has taught classes focused on microeconomics, health care policy and health care regulation.

Eugene Greener, Jr. Professor of Jewish Studies Emeritus, Professor Emeritus of History and Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies 

To honor David J. Wasserstein’s intellectual journey is to marvel at the rare depth and range of his historical and linguistic erudition. He earned a B.A. from Oxford University’s Pembroke College in 1974, graduating with mastery of Greek, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. He earned his D.Phil. from Oxford’s Faculty of Oriental Studies in 1982, equipped for a career that has taken him from classical antiquity to the present day. 

Although he is best known as a historian of al-Andalus, he has covered an astonishing span of history. His last two books, The Legend of the Septuagint (Cambridge University Press, 2006), which he co-authored with his late father, and Black Banners of ISIS (Yale University Press, 2017) have ranged from the world of the second century BCE to the Islamic State’s bureaucratic documents. He described the ISIS archive as “a magnificent jumble, with official responses to questions about the legality of foosball mixed in with electric bills and texts of congregational prayers. …” His book covered everything from messianic propaganda to tax records. Among other things, it analyzed the plans that ISIS had made to mint its own coins and make a historical claim to Islamic—specifically caliphal—sovereignty. 

Here we encounter two themes, caliphs and coins, that also run through Wasserstein’s masterful political histories of Muslim Spain in the 11th century, The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings (Princeton University Press, 1985) and The Caliphate in the West (Clarendon Press, 1993). In these celebrated books, he explores a period of political fragmentation, when central power collapsed in al-Andalus, and multiple rulers, the party-kings, struggled for legitimacy. Like ISIS centuries later, they sought legitimation in the institution of the caliphate. An Elected Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society, Wasserstein demonstrates this brilliantly by deciphering coin inscriptions. The worlds he reconstructs are those of “caliphs, counter-caliphs, and counterfeit caliphs” in fragmentary, factional states. 

His teaching has been an extension of his boundless curiosity. While his graduate students have appreciated his sharp-eyed corrections to their dissertation drafts, undergraduates have enjoyed his British humor and marveled at the awesome depths of his knowledge of everything from Jewish court physicians’ mastery of “Graeco- Muslim” pharmacology to the Arab Spring. 

Wasserstein’s gifts as a meticulous reader and incisive critic have made him into a highly appreciated editor and expert reviewer. He has co-edited five volumes, 

evaluated countless fellowship applications, served on many advisory boards, and refereed articles for at least 20 journals. He has co-organized and supported scholarly meetings. He also has served the broader public with essays and blogs that advance unconventional arguments such as the thesis that Islam saved the Jews. “This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world,” he argued in his most famous article, “but it is a historical truth.”

Paul E. Schwab Chair in Fine Arts Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Art and Community Engagement 

Melvin Ziegler joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2007. He earned his M.F.A. in 1982 from the California Institute of the Arts and a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1978. During his many years as chair of the Department of Art, Ziegler led the department through many stages of its ever-evolving vision, its growth and the development of the new art major. 

Throughout his career, Ziegler’s practice examined the role of art in public space, the socially constructed dimensions of our natural environment, the value of manual labor, and the importance of collaboration between the artist and the broader community. In Ziegler’s earlier works, he and his late collaborator Kate Ericson focused on social interventionist art. In 1988 their work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C., and was the subject of a major retrospective at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in 2006, accompanied by a significant publication, America Starts Here (MIT Press, 2006). He is the founder and executive director of the Sandhills Institute, “a catalyst for the creation of civically engaged, integrated art in and around the agricultural community” near Rushville in northwest rural Nebraska. Most recently he has created the Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler Foundation for “art, agriculture and community.” The place of operation is in the historic Pecos River Valley of Ribera, Pueblo and Villanueva, New Mexico. Here the foundation will house the extensive archives of Ericson and Ziegler and will work closely with the community to protect local agriculture and its heritage. 

Ziegler has exhibited nationally and internationally and has presented solo exhibitions at venues including Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Artpace, San Antonio, Texas; Secession, Vienna; and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including being a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1997 and a Creative Capital (Visual Arts) Fellow, and receiving an Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pollack-Krasner Grant and a Joan Mitchell Fellowship. 

His work is held in many public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Tang Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Rose Art Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Ziegler served as the Department of Art chair from 2007 to 2018. He was an influential teacher who instilled a passion for the arts in his students. In keeping with his vision to continually forge greater bonds between communities, he helped create the M-CRU community arts engagement program in North Nashville’s McGruder Community Center. In 2014 he brought the National Council of Arts Administrators conference to Nashville. In his tenure as chair he created a world-class, community-engaged, artists lecture series; proposed a fifth-year B.F.A. program; and worked closely with MTSU, Fisk and Watkins in an attempt to create a unique off-campus, community-wide, collaborative M.F.A. program for Middle Tennessee.

Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics and Gynecology 

Dr. Carl W. Zimmerman earned his B.S. from Peabody College in 1969 and his M.D. from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in 1972. He has continuously held clinical appointments at Vanderbilt University Medical Center since completion of his residency at Vanderbilt in July 1976. He joined the full-time faculty at Vanderbilt School of Medicine in January 2004 as a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and in 2012 was named the Frances and John C. Burch Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He was instrumental in creating the Division of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery and served as the director of the division until 2019. 

Dr. Zimmerman was similarly instrumental in the creation of the fellowship in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery, which was jointly run with the Department of Urology, befitting his collaborative style of leadership. He is an award-winning vaginal surgeon whose skill and wisdom have been imparted to generations of students, residents, fellows and faculty colleagues. Beyond Vanderbilt, he has provided more than 300 invited lectures and presented surgical videos in 17 states and 14 countries. Additionally, he has authored more than 50 journal articles and book chapters. 

Zimmerman has represented Vanderbilt nationally in leadership positions, including as president of the Society of Pelvic Reconstructive Surgeons in 2006. Most recently he served as president of the prestigious Society of Gynecologic Surgeons in 2021. 

Zimmerman has played a long-standing and vital educational role in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and with his academic achievements and world-renowned surgical expertise, he has been a superlative representative of Vanderbilt University and VUMC nationally and internationally.

Professor Emerita of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology 

Dr. Mary M. Zutter graduated from Tulane University School of Medicine in 1981 and subsequently completed residency and fellowship at the University of Washington affiliated hospitals and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. After 15 years on the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where she developed both a hematopathology subspecialty diagnostic service and a basic research program, Dr. Zutter joined Vanderbilt in 2003 as director of hematopathology and research scientist. 

In 2011, Zutter was named Louise B. McGavock Professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine and assumed the role of VUMC’s assistant vice chancellor for integrative diagnostics, charged with enhancing VUMC’s contributions to emerging integrative diagnostics at the leading edge of personalized medicine. Her work has been foundational in the development of “best in class” personalized/precision medicine at Vanderbilt. The Hematologic Malignancy Diagnostic Management Team, an evidence-based decision support system for oncologists within VUMC and elsewhere, is a novel initiative that serves as proof-of-concept: operationalizing real-time collaboration between oncologists and pathologists can optimize diagnostic accuracy, timeliness and value. The DMT concept has been central to the growth of Vanderbilt’s position as a leader in precision medicine. In 2014, Zutter co-founded the Lab Formulary, focused on ensuring optimally appropriate and efficient laboratory test utilization in a cost-effective manner, while maintaining the highest quality of care. 

As a scientist, Zutter has been focused on the molecular basis of cell-matrix interactions and the mechanisms by which these interactions influence cancer progression and metastasis. The Zutter Laboratory was funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health for more than 30 years and was primarily focused on the α2β1 integrin, a receptor for multiple cell adhesion and anti-angiogenesis molecules implicated in diverse processes, including normal development, inflammation and oncogenesis. 

Zutter has published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters and has taught numerous residents, fellows and graduate students.